Old Enough to Forget

Tonio K. is one of those artists you need to spend a little time with before you get to the payoff. I'll freely admit I came to Tonio K. through iDEoLA - more specifically because of the connection to WHAT? Records, which was distributed by A&M. For whatever reason, I still tend to think of Romeo Unchained and Tribal Opera as musical bookends. Which, of course, is pure unadulterated nonsense. Other than a heavy dose of '80s production, the albums are nothing alike. Romeo Unchained was an album I didn't give much more than a cursory listen to when I first got it many years ago. There were some catchy songs here and there, and musically this was a mid-'80s mix of alternative and techno - it was very '80s, with all of the trimmings. It was sparkly and new. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but after a couple of cursory spins it got shelved. Which was a shame and, frankly, my loss. A couple years ago I found a copy of Life in the Food Chain , and I took the...

I bought this on CD when this came out. Back in '86 this was a really strange album and for me, it was almost a country album (I didn't know what Americana was), and it fitted in right alongside all of the rock that was filling up my shelves. T Bone Burnett for whatever reason had a special place for me, he was his own genre. Going back to Trap Door and Truth Decay , I was expecting quirky, roots oriented music, but with this self titled effort Mr. Burnett took it up another level, stripping things down to the bare essentials. The album was recorded live to two track analog and two track digital June 24, 25, 26 and July 15, 1986. It is an amazing album, and when I found it on vinyl I figured, "Oh why not?" This was the first time I'd really been exposed to the stellar dobro and lap steel work of Jerry Douglas. It's really a shame that the instrumental version of "I Remember" isn't on the record, as to me it was the centrepiece of the album, and ...

Oh boy, here we are with the twelfth installment of Stylus Over Substance. What was supposed to be the short, bite-sized impressions of stuff I didn't feel like waxing all nonsensical over and wasting too many words. I've not always been successful, or coherent. Does it really matter? Probably not. You're either in, or you're out. It's all good. Sometimes it's better. I'm still working my way through the piles of records I got for Christmas, and the additional pile I just got for Father's Day will eventually get my attention. Sit back, put your feet up, let's celebrate the fifty-five other entries that came before and get to the next five. Howard Jones - Action Replay (1986) Martha and The Muffins - Trance and Dance (1980) Terry Jacks - Y'Don't Fight the Sea (1975) Barney Bigard & "The Pelican Trio" - Barney Bigard & "The Pelican Trio" (1978) The Alpha Band - Spark in the Dark (1977) Howard Jones - Action Repl...

I first heard of T-Bone Burnett when he was with the Alpha Band with Steven Soles and David Mansfield. I had a friend who had one of their albums. I can't remember which one, as I only heard it once, but it was quirky and caught my interest. Then I bought a copy of his 1982 EP Trap Door and pretty much played it to death. I loved the fact that he was self-effacing enough to make a joke about his passing resemblance to Eric Idle. The office where I worked used to have copies of People magazine, which I liked to read - for the record reviews. In one issue there was an article where Mariel Hemingway said her favourite album was T-Bone Burnett's Proof Through the Night. Well, I wasn't sold because of her endorsement; I was sold because I'd just realized there was a new T-Bone Burnett album. I remember talking about this with my girlfriend at the time, who absolutely loved The Who and The Monkees (she had great taste in music), and she casually mentioned that she saw T-Bon...